Landscape Lovers
by Juliedoo
Summary: He knows the topography of her skin. Hitsu/Karin.


-o-o-o-o-o-

He knows the topography of her skin.

Callouses on the heels of her feet like bear paws; scuffed knees and leathery hands and the thin scar stitching like spider silk across her taut abdomen from where her appendix was removed. Her lips are waxy and warm and taste like cherry chapstick. His fingers tunnel into her night colored hair, frizzy and damp—she can't be bothered with blow-dryers, and he likes that, likes the way she steps out of the shower, shedding steam, and lets the air lick her dry.

The pad of his thumb traces across her hipbone, his harsh breath hitchhiking along the blue highway of veins tunneling up her wiry arms. Her blunt nails are digging into the sweaty flesh of his back and they feel like bee stings, pleasant and poisonous. She sighs his name and arches into him and he can't _think_ anymore, can't _feel_, can't _exist_, because everything in him has sunk into her, and how can he function when she's pulled him out of his body and swallowed him whole, eating him alive as Cronos ate his godly children?

They swim in the darkness, a womb heavy with the sharp spiking and dimming of his spiritual pressure. Her soul twining around his like a purring cat. His control has peeled away from him as if it were an old band-aid. Any human would suffocate while breathing next to him, but Karin giggles and gasps in pleasure, this mortal with the lineage and pedigree of world crushing warriors, her own power frothing and foaming beneath the cork of her living skin.

And when they're done and she's splayed out across him like a tired blanket, pressing moist, sated kisses against his collar bone, he holds her close and feels like the worst sort of thief. The kind who steals the love of a woman he was never meant to meet, never meant to touch, and can't keep. Because her feet are stapled to the earth, and he floats across the moon, and between them is more than just distance.

He's toyed with the idea of desertion. Of casting aside his position, hanging up his _haori_, coming to the living world and marrying her. He wants that, in the selfish valves of his heart. To put a ring on her finger so anyone who looks at her can see she's taken, that she's his, that she belongs to him and he belongs to her. So that he can kiss her and hold her and bicker with her every day, fall asleep each night and wake up with her hogging all the blankets and drooling on his shoulder every morning. So that she can grow fat and irritable and pregnant with their child, and they can play rock paper scissors (loser changes the diapers) and teach the kid how to kick holes in a net with a soccer ball when it's old enough. He is so desirous of that pipe dream, like a starving man wanting a crust of bread.

But he's a martyr. Nailed to the cross of duty.

"It's one of your more irritating quirks," she tells him bluntly. And often.

But it's true.

The infrastructure of Seireitei is as wobbly as a house of cards. It can't afford to lose another captain after years of war and betrayal and genocide. He can't leave, refuses to abandon the men and women under his command, the soldiers who bleed and fight and die to keep the scales of the universe balanced. It isn't hubris to say there's no one strong enough to step into his shoes and lead the Tenth Division in his absence. He can't callously cast his subordinates aside because he has other goals, other needs and desires; if he did, he'd be a fucking hypocrite, no better than Aizen. He would never stomp on his principles like that, not even for Karin.

She understands, in her way. She's never been clingy. Too independent to need a man as a crutch, she's always walked in front of him or beside him, and she's never demanded he change himself for her. He'd asked her why, once. Why she bothered to put up with their here and there relationship, why she stuck with him when he couldn't give her a future, just an uncertain, infrequent present.

She'd scowled and scratched her ear, squinting at something past his shoulder. But her eyes had been soft, watery. Oil spilled in the ocean.

"Huh. You _would_ ask a stupid question like that," she'd huffed. "Well, I guess...loving you is like trying to catch wind in a jar," she'd said, and there had been an odd, almost childish wistfulness flavoring her voice. "If I tried to keep you, I wouldn't be able to take you out and feel you. Because you wouldn't be there, ya know?"

"No, I don't," he'd muttered sourly, because the fool woman wasn't making any sense.

She'd kicked him in the shin before continuing her awkward explanation. "I'm not gonna lie—it's hard that you're not here. I get lonely, I get pissed, but mostly I just miss you a lot." She'd shrugged uncomfortably, a _what can you do _sort of gesture. "But then you brush up against me like a breeze, and when I try to grab you you're gone. You're in and out of my life, visiting like you're stuck in a revolving door or something. But you always come back. And knowing that I'm going to see you again is enough. I'd rather have sometimes with you than a lifetime with anyone else."

She unravels him, the tomboy with the granite attitude and jello soft heart.

And he really, truly doesn't deserve her, but he's too selfish to let her go. God, he loves her so much. She's his left lung; without her he can't breathe. And he doesn't know what to do with her but hold her until morning spills in through the window and he has to leave again.


End file.
